Yanukovych statement

Ousted President Yanukovych issues a statement on the referendums conducted in Eastern Ukraine the previous day

Further information

This from the statement as reported by ITAR-TASS:

The absolute majority of residents in the main Ukrainian coalmining region Donbas went to vote at referendums on self-determination of two Ukrainian regions, because patience of Ukrainian people has already snapped....

“Today each of us is overfilled with thoughts and feelings about what is happening to our homeland,” he noted, adding that “If someone said to me four months ago that Ukraine would lose Crimea and people would be killed brutally and burnt alive in our “pearl at the Black Sea” and this would become a new Khatyn (a Nazi massacre at the Belarusian village of Khatyn on March 22, 1943) and Ukrainian army would begin combat actions against their own people in Donbas with use of helicopters, missile launch systems, grenade launchers, mortars, armored personnel carriers and would begin killings of civilians discontent with illegal authorities I would not believe in this.